$10,099 – that’s how much someone is asking for their copy of Christine Manfield’s Tasting India cookbook on Amazon. Sure, India Today called it the book to give native newlywed couples once they head overseas, so it’s a prized publication – but luckily, the new updated version of the award-winning book is much more budget-friendly (and includes new chapters on Hyderabad, Punjab and Gujarat, too).

While Christine Manfield is known as the acclaimed chef behind restaurants such as Paramount, East@West and Universal, we spend a lot of this podcast talking about her travels to India – a country that she’s constantly visited for more than two decades. She has vivid stories of spice markets (and mountains that are literally fragrant with thriving cardamom) as well as the home cooks she’s met – their dishes are documented in her cookbook. Plus, we cover the regional (and religious) differences that shape the food on the plate. And what you have for an Indian breakfast (it is way better than toast and cereal).

It was also great to talk to Christine about gender representation in the industry (when she was a judge in the S.Pellegrino Young Chef competition last year, the Herald quoted her saying: “Where the f— are the women?”). And I loved hearing about how Christine is still recognised on the streets of India because her Gaytime Goes Nuts dessert appeared in the finale of Masterchef Australia in 2012. (The dish is not only delicious, it’s also a statement in support of the gay community, too.)

You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts or download it via RSS or directly. You can also find it on Stitcher and Google Podcasts nowadays. And high-fives to everyone who has left a nice review in Apple Podcasts or even told me upfront that they like the podcast. It’s hugely, hugely appreciated (particularly when I’m trying to finish editing a podcast at 5am)!

Cam says the menu isn’t like any you’d see in Cambodia – where you make individual trips to particular open-air stalls for the one thing they’ve got a good rep for. Kingdom of Rice bypasses the need for these multi-stop journeys and conveniently puts all these dishes under one roof. Essentially, it retraces the hall-of-fame street food that the crew has tried on past trips (like lort cha: rice drop noodles stir-fried with bean sprouts and topped with a fried egg) while also recalling Cambodian staples that Sophia has grown up with.

So, the DIY sandwiches (which let you riff on banh mi by accessorising papaya salad and charred baguettes from Hong Ha with skewers of lemongrass beef, shiitake mushrooms or caramelised pork) are a throwback to Sophia’s childhood, while the trey neet alek (dried fish and watermelon) was a familiar sight at breakfast when growing up. The rice drop noodles kept everyone fed while her mum logged “a million hours” at work.

The ultra-fragrant turmeric fried rice with Thai basil, meanwhile, has an origin story from Phnom Penh: Sophia was only in the city for one week, but the OG version of this dish was so good that she conspired to eat it three times during her very short stay. The shopfront she kept returning to served the dish with fried chicken and pickles – but at Kingdom of Rice, it’s great enough to stand on its own. It resounds with so much flavour that it’ll inspire a guessing game, but if you fail to ID the ingredients, know that the rice grains are dialled all the way up, thanks to kreung, a paste that gets its multi-zing punch from garlic, eschalot, ginger, lemongrass (so much ginger and lemongrass!), galangal, turmeric and kaffir lime.

You might remember Mitch talking on The Mitchen about finding chicken wings in Phnom Penh that were in his all-time top five? You might assume what’s on the menu here is a tribute to that experience, but the wings can actually be credited to Sophia.

“The dishes are also cooked the way Sophia’s mum cooked them for her, or how Sophia cooks them. Some of the dishes she’s been cooking for me for a long time,” says Mitch. Everything else, though, taps into memories from their Phnom Penh experiences. And sure, you might not see entire restaurants wheeled onto the back of individual trucks here; or witness the time-lapse magic of a parking lot becoming a stall-packed eatery in just hours – or even clock sights such as eight people squeezed onto a scooter. But Kingdom of Rice circulates on the buzz and energy of a Cambodian market, nevertheless.

Recreating everything in Sydney required some leftfield thinking (Mitch mentions how the “aunties or uncles don’t want to share all their secrets”, so he had to reverse-engineer dishes to work out how locals made the turmeric fried rice, for instance). And while he credits Sophia for the food, she says it was a collaborative effort – claiming that she and Mitch “brain-dumped all the dishes we love and with Lil’s help, she brings them to life”. Sophia’s mother, in typical Asian mum-style, gave her feedback on the food (pleasing Asian mums can be famously/hilariously hard), which allowed the team to tweak things to the highest accuracy setting.

But Kingdom of Rice makes it feel like you’re experiencing the real deal in many ways. When you enter, you’re served cold jasmine tea (a move that’s straight up aunty-like hospitality) and given kaffir lime and lemongrass peanuts as a complimentary snack (it’s a real test not to clear the whole bowl in one go – they’re so ridiculously easy to demolish). The fact that Kingdom of Rice is effectively in a garage also evokes the tin-shed simplicity of the Cambodian markets. And the giant tins of Milo are cultural shorthand for how the choc-malt drink has such a big following over there (you might not realise this straight away, as the locals call it “Mee-lo”). Once the soft-serve machine starts behaving, expect some Milo-inspired dessert on the menu.

Some of the Cambodian dishes have been modulated for Australian palates (the corn with garlic chives has had its overly sweet levels pared back), and if you’re after vegetarian-friendly versions of the menu, you can ask nicely and the kitchen will skip the shrimp paste or pork fat that might’ve been on the ingredients list.

But however you play it, there’s so much to like at Kingdom of Rice: from the zing of the green mango slices that you dip into chilli and salt to the soy-darkened rice drop noodles that are so demolition-ready that you get why they’re so ubiquitous in Phnom Penh. Our friends Tom and Adele (like Grab Your Fork’s Helen Yee) also loved the barramundi with lemongrass and coconut. Char and heavy-duty heat turn up in key dishes: from the telltale grill marks on the DIY banh mi to the smoky eggplant that co-headlines a chicken mince dish with coriander (which Will liked, but Helen enjoyed so much she’s basically proposed marriage to it).

Something you shouldn’t overlook at Kingdom of Rice: the projections on the wall. Sophia’s filmmaking friend Kavich Neang actively tried to find pre-war films that weren’t destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. So what unspools on the walls are some of the movies he was able to preserve. It’s a tragic-but-triumphant back story worth knowing about.

It’s something I learn about from Cam, who, like Sophia, is such a bright and welcoming presence on the restaurant floor. He’ll advise you to order “semi-aggressively” and exclaim “what a time to be alive!” when ushering dishes to people’s tables. Cam also drops lots of good TV-watching advice (he’s the reason I finally watched The Honourable Woman and Black Earth Rising is next on my list), while Sophia openly shares lots of vivid intel and memories about specific Cambodian-inspired dishes. Think back to The Mitchen episode that recounts how the aunties at Phnom Penh markets would give Sophia high-fives when she walked through (she was essentially “mayor of the street”) – a similar charge of generosity and fun also runs through Kingdom of Rice.

The same “how can you not like this?” streak can be found in the Pandan Waffle ($12) with toasted coconut and coconut sorbet. The waffle might remind you of Mitch’s ube waffle at Acme, but it’s also a mash-up of Cabramatta and Phnom Penh: the pandan dessert is something you’ll see in the 2166 postcode, while coconut waffles are something you’ll get in the Cambodian capital.

Oh and for another taste of Cabra – there’s an on-site sugarcane press that produces juice that you can spike with booze (vodka or whiskey, for instance, although gin is my pick). It echoes the breezy South East Asian atmosphere perfectly. And yes, you could put on a puffy jacket and be reminded of how good the Franck Moreau-vetted wine collection is in the cool room, too. There are also pandan pina coladas and fruit shake slushies (with or without the booze). If you’re feeling low-key, a house-made papaya soda is a good way to stay out of trouble.

If Kingdom of Rice is not-so-secretly a way to resupply everyone with reasons to visit Phnom Penh, well, it’s a pretty convincing initiative. You totally buy the enthusiasm everyone has for the place, and it radiates throughout the restaurant – the place buzzes with unregulated delight for Cambodia. Even if you can’t get there for your own personal tour, being in the passenger’s seat for Kingdom of Rice’s version is pretty damn great. But, as a pop-up, there are term limits on how long this Merivale collaboration will be around for. So visit as often as you can before it drops out in six months – this playlist of Cambodia’s greatest hits can’t stay at full blast for all time.

“The most interesting place in Europe to eat” – that’s how Noma’s René Redzepi described Bo Bech’s first restaurant, Paustian. The Copenhagen venue was located in the last building Jørn Utzon ever designed – and the Sydney Opera House architect was one of Bech’s regular diners. (You need to hear the story behind the dish that Bech created for Utzon, which the chef talks about near the end of the podcast.)

Bech became a chef at a relatively late age – enduring terrible food during a peacekeeping mission inspired him to improve on what was available. “When I stepped into the kitchen at the age of 24, my world flipped.” To convince a bank manager to loan him the money to launch Paustian, he had to revert to some pretty unusual means (it did involve food, though).

Paustian is the focus of Bech’s first self-published book, What Does Memory Taste Like (which features a signature avocado dish that gets 80-something pages of coverage). His second restaurant, Geist, is more accessible in style – the type of place that’s “at eye height”, a place where Bech would could imagine being a frequent customer. It’s covered in In My Blood, his new book, which is like an autobiography of the restaurant. It features architect’s drawings and furniture sketches among 100 recipes from Geist itself. The book also covers rage and other inspirations behind his food (like his lifelong battles against endives and salmon).

We also chat about his recent dinner collaboration with Lennox Hastie and his favourite places to eat in Copenhagen.

You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts or download it via RSS or directly. You can also find it on Stitcher and Google Podcasts nowadays. And cheers to everyone who has left a kind review in Apple Podcasts or even told me in person that they like the podcast. Shout out to Niklas Harmsen of the excellent Slurp Ramen – I discovered after visiting his ramen joint that he somehow listens to this podcast (I don’t know how he even knows about the show from Copenhagen)!

At one point, he had 30 iterations of his recipe in play, trying to nail the right formula. He joked that it “killed” him trying to get everything – the flour, the flavour, the consistency – right. If you try the Marinara ($17), topped with optional fior di latte ($3) from Marrickville cheesemakers Vanella, you’ll know that all the troubleshooting paid off brilliantly. The wood-fired pizza has a crust that’s mapped in blisters and puffs, while the San Marzano tomato base is so juicy, sweet and briney – you could imagine downing the tomatoes straight from the can, they’re just pure fruit and salt: flavour uninterrupted. (Luke picked the right tins from his supplier, who had no shortage of San Marzano varieties to choose from.) The garlic hit, the strong lift of oregano and creamy clustering of melted cheese: you didn’t need a single thing more on top.

But if you want to accessorise further with protein and Parmesan, there’s the Pepperoni ($24), which Will ordered: it’s aptly topped with cuts of salami from LP’s Quality Meats, a cross-marketing move that doesn’t overlook flavour at all. The pizza deviates from its emoji pixel form with a quick scatter of fennel seeds, which adds an earthy accent to each slice.

Will’s favourite, though, is the Cime di Rapa ($22), which sets the lemony, bitter sharpness of braised greens against the double cream hit of Vanella’s fior di latte and house-made ricotta. There’s some low-key fermented chilli hanging out in there, too. It’s a lighter number that reminds you that spring is actually here, even if the constant rainclouds and pavement puddles are dulling your excitement about stepping outside. The garlicky greens are proof: there’s actually a sunny side to this season.

For Will, the Mortadella ($25) pizza is the runner-up winner: a choice he enjoyed on his second visit to Bella Brutta. The headlining cured meat is also from LP’s Quality Meats, with the fior di latte cheese and the sliced green olives playing support act. (My number one pick: the marinara with bonus cheese, followed by the Cimi di Rapa.)

There are many good side dishes to stop you from overindulging on crusts and toppings entirely. There’s the Green Tomatoes with Stracciatella ($12), because a pizzeria is probably the last place you should start limiting your curds and calcium intake, particularly when the cheese is kept in check with the cool shock of green tomatoes. I really love the garlicky White Beans ($12) topped with the zippy salsa verde, while the excellent Celery with Sunflower Seed, Celtuce and Pecorino ($14) dish should bump off every average rocket and Parmesan salad you see on a pizzeria menu: it’s punchy and refreshing and is an excellent way to remind you of how good the vegies typically are at LP’s – Luke has always had a strong track record there.

My second visit to Bella Brutta involved extra rounds of the pizzas I loved most, plus gratitude: I wasn’t so defeated by Pizza Belly that dessert was out of the question. (And not just one, but three: we had tiramisu, lemon sorbet and a blood orange ice-cream). No struggle here. Although I hear Elvis’ mum is responsible for the cannoli, which is an extra incentive to plot a revisit.

Speaking of family, Luke’s partner Tania Houghton is running the front of house, and is such a super-friendly presence that you’d give Bella Brutta high marks before you even sat down to eat anything.

Anyway, it’s wild to think that not long ago, Luke was a pizza-making novice. And he hadn’t even stepped foot into Italy, the dish’s place of origin.

But as Bella Brutta shows, none of this has held him back. Plus, his pizza isn’t about pleasing rulebook hardliners. There are a lot of influences that shape what goes into his wood-fired oven. Luke says everyone’s default for good pizza is different: his is Gjelina in LA and Roberta’s in Brooklyn (in fact, his oven is also the same model as Roberta’s – he could see that their version had taken a beating and still held defiantly strong). Elvis’s go-to for good pizza, meanwhile, is Domino’s!

No judgment, though, because Bella Brutta has created a new benchmark for good pizza itself.

It’s something I was reminded of when I reheated leftovers at home: my third run-in with its menu. I lazily shoved the slices in the sandwich press and the extra blast of heat accentuated the garlicky-sweetness of the marinara. Of course, I was done too soon and the leftovers made way for an empty, sauce-smeared plate. I’ll be back for my fourth, fifth and sixth visits and counting. I said I was a Bella Brutta mega fan, didn’t I?

“It was probably the singular worst experience of my life, because Noodle Bar will kick your ass.” Sure, Su Wong Ruiz‘s first go at working for David Chang’sMomofuku restaurant empire wasn’t the greatest success. (“My ass was completely flattened by that experience,” she says.) But over time, she became part of the acclaimed, three-hat-earning launch team for his Momofuku Seiobo restaurant in Sydney (Chang claimed this was his first venue “where the front of house is equal to, if not better than, the kitchen team”). Then Su went on to work for Momofuku’s Má Pêche (where she met future Seiobo chef, Paul Carmichael) and Momofuku Ko, which has been called Chang’s most ambitious restaurant.

“Dave is a very particular type of coach and tormenter – he’s really good at it,” jokes Su. So it was fascinating to hear her talk about the unexpected challenges and standards set by the influential chef, as well as her strong working relationships with Ben Greeno (Seiobo’s first head chef) and Sean Gray, who rules the kitchen at Momofuku Ko. I also enjoyed hearing how ultra-creative Sean’s dishes are – like the cold fried chicken, for instance, and how things went down at their recent collaboration at Melbourne’s Marion bar. Then there’s the fascinating bar that they set up next to Ko (which Pete Wells called “The David Chang Restaurant Almost Nobody’s Heard Of”).

Plus: Su’s insights on delivering good restaurant service – and dealing with trolls – are really fascinating. It’s especially interesting because her career started on the other side of the pass: when she “conned” her way into a job as a cook while visiting New Mexico. She also shares her favourite places to eat and drink in Sydney and New York.

They’ve worked in Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Croatia, Greece, Bali and the Carribean. At one point, Ross had a job in Singapore while Sunny was in Chicago – and somehow, they ended up commuting and making it work. The couple were drawn back to Australia, though, because Ross had his eye on a restaurant location in Sydney: it had been his dream venue for 10 years. And once the site became available, the pair turned it into The Bridge Room (despite a floor that literally exploded and some awkward $50,000 phone calls to ensure the interiors met heritage restrictions).

Previously, Ross worked for Neil Perry – and, after an injury that kept Ross out of the kitchen, the chef ended up overseeing Neil Perry’s airplane meal range for Qantas; he even got to test the food in an airplane simulator.

Ross and Sunny have many great tales about their travels abroad: from changing people’s lives with Thai food in Croatia, visiting Noma in its early days and discovering surprising uses for popcorn in Bhutan. They also reveal the back story to launching The Bridge Room, which is currently one of the country’s most well-regarded restaurants.

Kylie Javier Ashton has dealt with forged bookings, martini glass accidents, disguising Alex Atala with garbage bags, and countless people throwing up when she’s on the job (“you could see the frequency of the voms go up when the scampi dish was on” is one of the most memorable lines from this interview). Having survived all that, it’s clear that she still loves her work and wants people to join the industry (as her involvement in Women In Hospitality, Appetite For Excellence and Grow shows).

Kylie Javier Ashton got her start at Tetsuya’s, when it was ranked in the Top 5 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. She’s since become the award-winning restaurant manager at Momofuku Seiobo, which has been twice-named the best restaurant in Australia by Gourmet Traveller. Not a bad place for her to be, considering she didn’t “even know how to carry plates” when she entered the industry.

Kylie has many amazing stories to tell, and covers it all, from what it’s like to actually work with David Chang (she’s amazed he even remembers her name!), the background to Paul Carmichael’s food at Seiobo and why she asks her staff to give presentations on Caribbean culture, and the reality of your restaurant being in two pieces in The New York Times: one by Pete Wells, the other by Besha Rodell.

Plus: that memorable period running Duke Bistro with Mitch Orr, Thomas Lim and Mike Eggert (which followed her spell at Bentley Restaurant & Bar with Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt – the “hardest” place she worked). And let’s not forget the time she also boxed in Cuba.

I LOVED talking to Kylie for this interview and she drops some of the best lines I’ve heard (it’s worth listening to this episode so you can discover why “I’ve just been out on Oxford Street with an eyepatch” and “I didn’t realise I was Wolverine for so long” are two of the greatest things anyone has ever said on this podcast).

Turning unwanted coconuts into 2000 curries, 10 tonnes of donated squash into soup, leftover egg yolks from 16,000 Black Star Pastry watermelon-strawberry cakes into banana curd and working out what to do with 800 kilograms of airplane food picked up from the domestic airport gate – these are just some of the things that Travis Harvey handles as executive chef of a food-rescue charity.

Working at OzHarvest means he’s had to be pretty creative: for instance, he takes the most wasted ingredient in Australia – bread – and transforms it into dishes like fried Lazarus bread or ramen noodles at OzHarvest’s pop-up cafe at Gratia in Surry Hills. He’s also encountered other inventive ways of saving waste, like Josh Niland’s attempt to incorporate cobia fat and fish scales into a chocolate bar dessert. Harvey has also collaborated with high-profile talent, like Massimo Bottura and even Cookie Monster. Through initiatives like the CEO Cook-off and OzHarvest food truck, he’s helped the charity send 90 million meals to people in need over its 14-year history.

Prior to his time at OzHarvest, he contributed to a stove-building project in Guatemala and endured Canberra restaurants that felt like episodes of Survivor. He even worked in kitchens that practise the very opposite of what he does today: extracting collagen from chicken wings, only to throw the wings out afterwards.

It was fascinating chatting to Travis – I think he’s one of the most resourceful and creative chefs in Australia right now. Make sure you check out his work at the OzHarvest Cafe pop-up, which is running at Gratia in Surry Hills until September.

You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts or download it via RSS or directly. You can also find it on Stitcher and Google Podcasts nowadays. And thanks to everyone who has left a nice review in Apple Podcasts or even just told me in person that they enjoy the podcast (like the two kind folks at OzHarvest who said complimentary things after I finished recording there – that was a great surprise)!

Joe Beddia makes “America’s best pizza”, according to Bon Appétit magazine. The chef/owner of Philadelphia’s Pizzeria Beddia has also been referred to as Pizza Jesus and the Jiro of Pizza. He shrugs off what he does as “just pizza”, but people would line up many hours (sometimes even arriving before Joe got to work!) just to try his pies. He only made 40 pizzas a night – and he produced each one from scratch over the restaurant’s five-year run.

Joe is currently on a world tour that he hopes doesn’t make people hate him – he’s been to France, Italy, eaten at Noma, and he’s currently in Sydney to do a week-long pop-up at Bondi Beach Public Bar. So locals can find out whether his work can be downgraded to “just pizza”. Given that sommelier James Hird (who helped tee up the pop-up) describes eating at Pizzeria Beddia as one of his favourite ever food memories, you won’t want to miss Joe’s Australian-inspired versions of his pies while he’s here.

Joe also talks about life-changing pizza experiences in Tokyo, how he ended up spending his 40th birthday with comedian Eric Wareheim and how he essentially produced his Pizza Camp cookbook using his home oven. Oh and he also memorably recaps the time he attempted a stunt with a blindfold, razor, shaving cream and no pants in the hopes of winning $10,000 and a trip to the Playboy Mansion.

You can check out Joe’s Sydney pop-up (from July 22 to July 28, 6pm until late at the Bondi Beach Public Bar) before he opens Pizzeria Beddia 2.0 in Philadelphia at the end of the year.

I first met Anna Vu at MCA Zine Fair – she was selling a zine that illustrated 20 memorable dishes she’d eaten in New York (so yes, there was zero decision-making needed: I knew I had to buy a copy and add it to my library of hand-made A5 magazines). Fast forward some years later, we ended up working together at Gourmet Traveller(she was finishing up as creative director, I was freelancing as a sub-editor) and jump ahead to this week: we’re teaming up for an exhibition at New Moon in Lewisham.

It’s the first show for this new inner-west gallery. The exhibition pairs Anna’s Good Food Crap Drawing project with six of my podcasts. So her picture of a Mary’s burger is a natural match for my interview with Mary’s co-owner Jake Smyth; her illustration of a Brian bottle is an obvious fit for my chat with Mike Bennie, who is one of the label’s creators (and former wine-procurer for Malcolm Turnbull, Russell Crowe and A Tribe Called Quest). Those two episodes will be featured in a park set-up, with crates and bagged wines – a perfect backdrop for those two pro-booze cheerleaders.

The show has been cleverly devised by Kim Siew, who asked me to be part of the For The Face exhibition at Create or Die in Marrickville in 2015. (There, she also incorporated my podcasts into a food-heavy show: you sat at a dining table, and the plates were adorned with blurbs for each podcast – which you could listen to via nearby earphones.) The remaining podcasts will be featured in a similar at the New Moon Gallery: you can park yourself at a table and listen to my episodes with the following restaurateurs.

Ben Shewry, who started his career shaping margarine sculptures for hotel buffets and cooking New Zealand’s biggest nachos for drunk students. When he took over Attica, he was 27, a new dad and the restaurant was $250,000 in debt. After immense, unbelievable hardship, he turned it around (boy, does he have some stories to tell from that period). Today, Attica is ranked #20 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

Analiese Gregory, who has regularly plated one of the world’s most legendary dishes – the gargouillou – at Bras in France, a restaurant that was on her bucket list. She escaped her car being blown up and experimented with mould at Mugaritz in Spain, another top international restaurant. And she’s also run a pop-up restaurant in Morocco – where everything (yes, even rubbish) needed to conveyed in and out of the city via donkeys. In Australia, she’s worked at Quay, ACME and currently, Franklin in Hobart.

Palisa Anderson, who told herself that she’d never “work in a restaurant, nevertheless a Thai restaurant” – but after some detours living in four different countries (and through other careers), she’s ended up as co-director of the many Chat Thai restaurants across Sydney and its spin-off venues (like Boon Cafe, which is one of Dan Hong’s favourite places to eat breakfast in Sydney). One of the most memorable lines in this interview is when Palisa admits that “one of my best friends was a chrysanthemum” when she was growing up.

Sarah Doyle, who originally worked three jobs just to help keep Bodega running – the first restaurant she played a part in opening. Nowadays, she is involved with Porteno, Wyno (its wine bar), Continental Deli Bar Bistro, LP’s Quality Meats, Mary’s and Stanbuli. She’s definitely come a long way from her early days as a balloon artist working at Australia’s Wonderland.

Related drawings of dishes from those aforementioned establishments will be exhibited throughout the show. The walls will also feature new work by Anna, including illustrations of Danielle Alvarez’s triangoli at Fred’s triangoli, meat galore from Luke Powell’s LP’s Quality Meats and the “Baller Bucket” that Morgan McGlone sells at Belle’s Hot Chicken.

There’ll be a vego-friendly community dinner at the opening if you want to come along to check out the show and this new space!